


To Trust That There Will Be Light

by Tam_Cranver



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: M/M, raccoons - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17126969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver
Summary: The one where Matt tries to rebuild some relationships, realizes he's in love with Foggy, and makes friends with a family of raccoons, in no particular order.





	1. Is that courage or faith, to show up every day?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarvelsMenace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarvelsMenace/gifts).



> I loved the idea of Matt's army of crime-fighting raccoons, but I couldn't come up with a good plot for it, so instead I went for the prompt about Matt and Foggy realizing they were in love with each other, and just added raccoons into the mix. I hope it works for you, and thanks for the prompts, MarvelsMenace! Story and chapter titles are from "Six" by Sleeping At Last.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt has insomnia, helps a friend out, and makes a new acquaintance.

Sooner or later, Matt thought, he was going to be able to get to sleep in his apartment again.

He hoped it was sooner, rather than later.

He would have thought, with how much better things had gotten lately—being officially alive again, having Foggy and Karen back in his life, his wounds healing and his senses back on track and being surrounded by his own things in his own apartment rather than damp and dust and memories in a church basement—his mind might have let him relax a little. But in fact, the opposite seemed to be true. When Fisk had been on the outside again—God, was it only a few weeks ago?—Matt had slept with the same single-minded doggedness he’d done everything else. If his dreams were terrible, well, everything was terrible, and he shoved them down and slept through them.

But now his mind raced as he lay in bed at night. There was so much to do, so much lost time to make up for. And the normalcy of his apartment felt surreal rather than comforting. It felt _wrong_ , to be thinking of things like incorporating the firm again and finding real office space and settling on a new health insurance plan. Like he should be traveling the world in search of Elektra, or chasing Vanessa Marianna-now-Fisk down to whatever foreign tax shelter she’d found herself and ensuring that she and her new groom weren’t planning something, or—or helping Danny Rand with whatever the hell he was off doing. Like he felt too good, too happy, too comfortable, and even if he told himself it was a good thing and to appreciate it, something in his subconscious wasn’t satisfied with that and spun even meditations on utility bills into narratives about the large injustices in the world that Matt wasn’t doing nearly enough to combat. And if that weren’t enough, there was Father Lantom, and their last conversation, to think of, and Sister Maggie…

Matt rolled over, punching his pillow down. He couldn’t think about her now, or he really would never get to sleep.

In the alleyway, something thumped, and Matt groaned even as his inner fight-or-flight response flipped to fight, flooding him with another wave of unwanted adrenaline. It wasn’t someone getting mugged, it wasn’t someone trying to break into his apartment, it wasn’t even human. It was an animal digging through the trash—a cat, maybe, but more likely a raccoon or something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything that called for Daredevil’s intervention.

But Matt’s subconscious, as usual, didn’t get the memo. He sighed and prepared for another sleepless night.

The next morning, he entered Nelson’s Fancy Meats to a cheerful greeting from Foggy. “Hey, Matt! Just in time, the coffee’s still hot.”

“It’s the good stuff, too,” chimed in Karen, and Matt smiled, happy to hear them and be with them, but also happy to be happy about it. For such a long time he’d been faking smiles, and worrying about what he told them, and so stressed about the troubles his very existence brought them that there was a real and intense relief to feel unvarnished pleasure at hearing their voices.

“Great,” he said. He sniffed the cup that Foggy poured him. “Mmm, you’re right, that is the good stuff. Your mom’s?”

“Theo’s,” said Foggy. “He’s getting to be quite the connoisseur. It’s not really a butcher shop thing, but I guess in this market you can’t afford not to diversify.”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

“So!” said Karen once Matt had doctored his coffee to his liking. It still tasted like ham—everything tasted like a deli in Nelson’s Fancy Meats, the smell couldn’t be avoided—but a little fresh cream helped. “We’ve got Mrs. Santorino coming in at 10:00 to talk about her son. He got busted for dealing again, but he claims the police planted it on him.”

Foggy groaned. “Ugh. I swear to God our clients are going to _kill_ all our goodwill with the cops.”

“I think that goes with the defense attorney’s territory,” said Karen implacably. “1:00 you have an appointment at Sing Sing to talk with Jerry Martinez about retrying his case.”

Matt took another sip of his coffee and bolstered his courage. He’d put this off far too many times. “If you’re in contact with the people at Sing Sing today, would you mind making another appointment for me?”

He could feel their attention on him like a spotlight. “With _who_?” Foggy demanded.

“Whom,” Matt murmured, and Foggy snorted.

“No. No way, you’re not sidetracking me with grammar. Who do you want to talk to at Sing Sing, and why?” He leaned back in his chair, and his heart rate jumped. Matt winced. “Please, _please_ tell me you’re not plotting to bring down another crime boss. Jesus, if we get shot at by another lunatic—”

“It’s nothing like that,” Matt interrupted. “It’s, ah. It’s someone who’s helped me before, and I have a feeling he could use some legal advice. I think I owe it to him to at least offer.”

“Helped you how?” asked Karen, more curious than angry. “Are we talking about another vigilante?”

Matt scratched at his chin, unsure how much to say. Yes, he and Karen and Foggy were trying to build a new foundation of honesty in their friendship. Yes, the recent revelations about Sister Maggie had hit him hard and made him realize in a way he maybe hadn’t before the way a secret could poison things between people. But Melvin had kept Matt’s secrets, and even in selling Matt out to Fisk, he’d never told the police what he knew about Daredevil, which could have helped Melvin get the pressure off his own back, especially when the false Daredevil was running around and killing people. How much could Matt in good conscience reveal?

He'd been silent too long, because Foggy leaned forward again, resting his elbows on the table, and said, his voice deliberately calm. “Okay. Okay, if this guy’s a client, or a potential client, I can see where attorney-client privilege might be a thing. But I—but _we_ need you to be straight with us, Matt. Is this gonna be one of those conversations that ends with you fighting your way out of a prison and getting dumped in the Hudson in a taxi?”

In retrospect, Matt regretted getting _quite_ so detailed in his explanation to Foggy of that particular episode. “No, it, ah….” Maybe confidentiality wasn’t the right way to think about it. Maybe the better way to frame it would be Melvin’s best interests—certainly the three of them working together could compile a more solid defense than Matt working on his own. “Look,” he said finally, “I’d rather get his okay before telling you all the details. But I’ll give you the basics, and you can decide whether it’s a case you’d be interested in helping me out on.”

In as little personal detail as possible, Matt explained Melvin’s original connection to Fisk, his willingness to provide Matt with body armor again and again as long as Betsy was protected, his involvement with Fisk and Poindexter more recently, and his current position awaiting trial for criminal conspiracy and assaulting federal agents.

When Matt was done, Foggy let out a thunderous sigh. “Wow.”

Karen, who’d been holding her mug of coffee motionless as Matt talked, its warmth leaking away minute by minute, set it down. “I don’t like it, Matt. He sold you out!”

“Because his family was threatened,” said Matt. “We tried to help Ray Nadeem, and he was in a similar position. Sometimes you don’t realize how deep you’re in trouble until someone makes it clear what you have to lose.”

“Yeah, fine,” said Karen, unconvinced, “but people _died_ because he made that second Daredevil suit. He didn’t just steal your identity and try to ruin your reputation, he let Benjamin Poindexter murder a bunch of people and investigate his own crimes while he did it. Poindexter killed your _priest_ , and he did it while wearing body armor _Melvin Potter_ made!”

“Karen,” Foggy said, his own tone turning conciliatory, “let’s take it down a notch.”

“It’s all right, Foggy.” Matt contemplated reaching out to take Karen’s hand—it certainly would have made _him_ feel better—but he wasn’t sure she’d welcome it right now. “Karen, look. I’m not going to pretend that Melvin’s working with Fisk was a good choice. It had consequences that we all have to live with, and that a lot of people died for. But Melvin didn’t kill anyone.”

Karen opened her mouth to interject, but Matt kept going. “He was in a bad position, and he made a bad call, and God knows there’s been a lot of that going around. But he’s not some criminal mastermind. He’s a guy who didn’t think through all his options and went with the one that he thought he could handle and that he thought would keep him and his loved ones safe. He doesn’t deserve to do the kind of time Fisk and Poindexter are going to do, and he doesn’t deserve to be taken advantage of by a legal system that isn’t going to help him represent his interests.”

In the silence that followed this little speech, Matt wondered if perhaps this hadn’t been the right time to bring this up after all, then dismissed that as cowardice. It wasn’t realistic to think that he and Karen and Foggy would never clash on any opinions again, and he owed Melvin better than to give in now.

Finally, Foggy said, “Let’s review the facts of his case, okay? We can get the reports at the precinct. Does he have any family we can contact?”

Betsy, Matt thought, but if she’d followed his advice, she wouldn’t be in town. Then again, she hadn’t seemed any too inclined to take advice from Daredevil. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, “but I think if we’re able to contact his parole officer, she’d be willing to help.”

“Seriously?” Matt couldn’t blame Foggy for asking. Most of the parole officers they worked with were overloaded, jaded, and not generally willing to stick their necks out too far for their parolees.

He smiled wryly. “If she’s around,” he said. “If she didn’t run after Fisk got out, yeah, seriously, I think she’d help.”

Foggy drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay then. Divide and conquer—Karen, the next time you talk to the folks at Sing Sing, see if we can’t set up a meeting with Melvin, and assuming Mrs. Santorino doesn’t take all morning, Matt, you and I can get in touch with the PO. I’m not promising anything, by the way,” he cautioned, “but it doesn’t hurt to do due diligence.”

Whether Foggy ended up signing on the case or not, even making contact with Melvin and Betsy would get Matt further along toward helping Melvin than he’d managed so far. And as much as Matt had feared his two worlds coming together, he was legitimately looking forward to the possibility of working on Melvin’s case with Foggy and Karen. Nelson, Murdock, and Page, back in business once again.

The rest of the day didn’t bring too many developments, but was informative—Melvin was currently in administrative segregation (Matt winced, only too able to imagine what might have been the reasons behind that), but would be available for visitors next week, and Betsy was in fact still in town but was exceptionally dubious about offers of free legal assistance, particularly from lawyers whose names had so often been mentioned in the same breath as Fisk’s.

“Hey,” said Foggy as they put on their coats and prepared to leave the office for the day, “don’t freak out, okay?” He lay a hand on Matt’s arm, warm and grounding. “We’re just getting started. And I think….” He paused, as if unsure about what he was going to say next, but continued. “I actually think this is a good thing. Getting involved in Potter’s case, I mean. I wasn’t sure about it when you first mentioned it, but I think it’s a good thing to do.”

Matt nodded, feeling suddenly very tired, like a stretched rubber band suddenly let go of. “Yeah. Thanks, Fog.”

If he’d thought that this feeling of loose exhaustion would mean he’d fall asleep easily that night, though, he was mistaken. The possibilities wouldn’t stop running through his head. What if Melvin refused their help? If he recognized Matt, and revealed his identity? He imagined having to fight his way out of another prison, this time with Foggy and maybe Karen by his side. Jesus, it didn’t bear thinking about. But maybe even worse was the nagging suspicion that Melvin would accept his help, and that Matt would let him down. What if Matt promised more than he could give? What if he made things worse?

Maybe some tea would help.

His apartment building was full of the usual creaks and whines and gurgles that went hand in hand with aging pipes and floors, the shifting and breathing and rhythmic heartbeats of its inhabitants, but everyone was asleep, and the noises of filling a mug with water and turning on a microwave seemed inordinately loud in the relative quiet.

Outside, whatever had been rummaging around in his garbage was out there again. When Matt’s tea was done, he settled on his couch and listened to it, for lack of anything better to do. It was a raccoon, he decided; the tail wasn’t feline, and the way it moved didn’t match the way dogs or cats moved, in his experience. It was heavy, awkward, and hungry.

Some pigeons landed on the street next to it, dodging the raccoon to nab bits of half-eaten Big Macs and pretzels that it let fall. The raccoon wasn’t fast enough to catch or stop them.

Matt listened to the hidden drama of the alleyway until eventually he fell asleep on the couch.

The following week, having convinced Betsy of their good intentions enough for her to give them her grudging cooperation, Matt, Foggy, and Karen secured a meeting for Matt and Foggy with Melvin at Sing Sing. It had occurred to Matt to try and meet with Melvin alone, first, but Foggy had dissuaded him from it.

“It’s not like you guys are going to talk Daredevil stuff right there in the prison, right?”

“He doesn’t know Matt Murdock and Daredevil are the same person.”

Foggy had paused at that. “Really?”

Matt sighed. “Why on earth would he need to know that? I know the concept of a secret identity rubs you guys the wrong way, but given that it’s the only thing standing between me and federal prosecution, I don’t think it should be that surprising that I’m not going around passing out business cards to everyone Daredevil interacts with.”

“No, I get that,” said Foggy impatiently, “but I would have thought that knowing who you are would have been one reason for him to take a meeting with us.”

“Honestly, I think at this point he’d just be happy to get some competent legal assistance,” said Matt. “And he’d know our names from Fisk—anyone Fisk doesn’t like would be okay in his book.”

“There you go!” There was triumph in Foggy’s book. “So there’s no reason for you to go in alone—he knows Nelson and Murdock as the firm who took down Fisk, so why not get two lawyers for the price of one?”

“For the price of a quarter of one,” put in Karen, who still wasn’t completely sold on the idea but was more or less reconciled to it.

Matt had conceded the point as reasonable—his reasons for wanting to see Melvin alone had been based more on his feelings of guilt than on any solid legal argument—but something about the conversation stayed with him. Melvin wasn’t stupid by any stretch of the imagination, even if Fisk had talked in front of him like he was. Maybe Matt was making a mistake, thinking that Melvin didn’t know his real name. Maybe a show of trust on his part would be a fair trade for the trust they would need from Melvin to put forward a real and effective defense.

Melvin was nervous when they brought him out to talk with Matt and Foggy; Matt could read the tension in his every tense movement, in the way his head moved back and forth between them, sizing them up.

“Mr. Potter,” said Foggy, friendly but all business. “I’m Foggy Nelson, and this is my partner Matt Murdock. The purpose of this conversation is just to establish the facts of your case to determine if we’re able to help you out. Does that sound good to you?”

“Yeah,” said Melvin, but it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Do you have any questions before we get started?” asked Matt, hoping that if they could get the conversation rolling a little, Melvin might relax.

Melvin shifted in his seat, even more tense. He clearly wanted to say something, his breath repeatedly inhaling in expectation, but his pulse was rapid and shallow, and his posture stiff. He was sweating, and the sweat stank sourly. Matt took a moment to process the information he was getting. This was more than nerves. This was genuine fear. And there was good reason for it. Fisk’s good behavior had been bought with Vanessa’s immunity for now, but there was ample precedent for his orchestrating criminal operations from the base of a prison. And it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to have Melvin killed or, what would be worse as far as Melvin was concerned, to have something happen to Betsy.

As soon as the thought came into his head, Matt had made the decision. He leaned forward across the table and, in a voice so low he doubted that Foggy could hear him, he said to Melvin, “Betsy’s safe. And I’m going to do my absolute best to keep her safe.”

To Melvin’s credit, he didn’t start back in surprise, but his heartrate jumped and he gasped, a low, sharp sound. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” said Matt.

“I’m really sorry,” Melvin said. “I’m really, really sorry I hurt you, and made that suit, and—”

“I understand.” And he did. Fisk was an expert at finding people’s weak points. God knew he’d found Matt’s again and again. “And I’m sorry I left when you were arrested. But can I trust you not to tell anyone else? It’s going to be a lot easier for me to help you and Betsy if I don’t have to worry about keeping the people I love safe, too.”

“Hey,” Foggy broke in, “I think we should probably keep this conversation focused on your legal defense, Mr. Potter.” His voice was firm and cheerful, but his pulse said that he was getting nervous, too.

“Right,” said Melvin. “Okay. You can help me get out of here?”

“We can’t promise that you’ll be released right away.” Matt leaned back and raised his voice to normal speaking tones again. “But we think we’ll be able to help. A lot of FBI agents were working for Fisk when they arrested you, and Fisk was a real danger to you when he made you work for him. You have a good argument that Wilson Fisk should get at least part of the blame for the situation you were in.”

“Probably not all of it, huh?” asked Melvin glumly.

“We can’t say one way or the other until we know more details,” said Foggy. “Do you mind if we ask you some questions? I’d like to start with the suit you made for the fake Daredevil.”

Melvin looked from Foggy to Matt. His body language was more open now, his breath more even, but the fear hadn’t gone away. “You’re really going to help me? And Betsy won’t get hurt?”

“We’re really going to help you,” said Matt firmly. “And if Wilson Fisk or anyone else goes after Ms. Beatty, they won’t get away with it.” Whatever else he could or couldn’t offer, _that_ he could promise with a clear conscience.

“Okay.” Melvin swallowed and sat up straighter. “Okay.”

When they left the prison a few hours later, Matt felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The situation wasn’t perfect—the assault charges might well be a sticking point, and the defense attorneys representing some of the crooked FBI agents had had varying levels of success demonstrating that the agents had acted under duress—but Melvin had plenty to offer the US Attorneys building their case against Fisk, and he’d been a lot less directly involved in facilitating Poindexter’s violence than the FBI agents, who had also had more resources available to them. Matt was optimistic. Especially given the spirit of cooperation—temporary though it would probably be—between Nelson, Murdock, and Page and the NYPD, there was a good chance they might actually get Melvin out on time served.

“Hey, Matt?”

It was a sign of how in his own head Matt was that he hadn’t realized Foggy was getting ready to speak. “Hmm?”

“I’m glad we’re doing this.” Foggy’s tone was at its most earnest, but for once, that earnestness wasn’t trying to get Matt to do something but was warm and satisfied—maybe even pleased with him. Matt felt himself stand up straighter and smile slightly in response. “I wasn’t a hundred percent sure on this, but I think you really called it when it comes to Melvin.”

“We’ve got a pretty good case,” Matt agreed, but Foggy shook his head.

“I mean, yeah, but I was thinking more about why you wanted to do this in the first place. Melvin’s kind of your friend, right?”

Those weren’t the terms Matt had used to think about their relationship. He didn’t mentally sort Melvin into the same category as he did Karen and Foggy. But Melvin had helped him, and had been gracious and accommodating about it. Matt respected his talents and his willingness to protect the woman he loved, and if he were thinking about it, he liked Melvin, too, trusted that underneath his legal record and their history that he was a good person and one worth trusting. “Yeah, I guess.”

Foggy nodded. “That’s great, Matt. I think if you’re gonna keep trying to balance the lawyer and Daredevil sides of things, it’s gotta be a team effort, and Melvin’s a good person to have on the team. And I’m really glad you looped me and Karen in on it. I’m really—good job, buddy. Honestly.”

“Well,” said Matt, because that kind of straightforwardness demanded a response, “I think—handling things on my own hasn’t worked out well in the past. And if we’re a team, then…then we’re a team.”

It was an inane thing to say, and it didn’t capture even a fraction of what Matt was feeling, but it seemed to do the job for Foggy, who squeezed Matt’s arm in a warm, comradely fashion before letting go.

It affected Matt more than it really should have, he thought, swallowing an unexpected tangle of emotions.

That night, Matt managed to sleep for almost three uninterrupted hours before he woke, full of energy and directionless drive. He hadn’t been going out as Daredevil much lately—he’d interfered in a few muggings and attempted burglaries, but nothing so major it required untangling criminal conspiracies or the like—but he had a real mission tonight.

Betsy Beatty had clearly been expecting him; she was waiting on the roof of her building when he made it over there. “Some high-profile lawyers offered to help Melvin out for free,” she said without offering a greeting. “But I guess you already know about that.”

Matt shrugged, unsure how much Betsy already knew. He didn’t think Melvin would be able to keep his identity from her once he was released, but Matt was selfishly grateful that he would probably have time before then to figure out how exactly to deal with Betsy. “I did,” he said shortly.

Betsy nodded, as if she had expected him to say as much. “I gotta say, that was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting you to just let him take the fall for you and rot.”

Indignation and hurt warred in Matt—he wanted to defend himself, he wanted to shoot back that Melvin had sold _him_ out first—but he didn’t think Betsy would accept that as an excuse. So instead, he said, “I owe him. And you may or may not believe this, but I like him, too. Whatever I can do to help him, I’m gonna do. And that includes making sure you’re safe.”

She snorted at that. “Yeah, thanks, but I can take care of myself. If you don’t think the state Corrections office is taking precautions after that bullshit with Fisk, you’re even stupider than you look.”

He nodded, not sure what else to say in response to that.

After a moment, though, she added, “I’m glad you’re helping Melvin. Just don’t blow it. You _do_ owe him.”

It was as good a concession as Matt was going to get from her, so he’d take it as a win.

The raccoon was back in the alley when Matt got back to his apartment building. It didn’t run when it noticed him; instead it froze, apparently waiting to see what he would do.

“You’re practically my new neighbor now, huh?” he said. “Seems like every night you and I are awake at the same time.”

The raccoon seemed to decide that Matt wasn’t a threat, and it went back to digging through a half-empty bag of barbecue potato chips that someone had thrown at, but not in, the dumpster. The smell had a distinct air of corner grocery store about it.

“Enjoy,” said Matt, unable to keep a smile from his face. “I’m glad someone’s cleaning up those chips.”

They were a good way through the night now, past the point where things switched over from being ‘late at night’ to ‘early in the morning,’ late enough that Matt could hear movement in the building as Mr. McIntosh, who usually left for work at 4:00, started moving around his apartment and making breakfast. Matt peeled off his black clothing, cleaned off some sweat with a washcloth, and lay down, expecting to lie awake for the rest of the night.

He was surprised when, seemingly seconds after he closed his eyes, his alarm clock announced that it was time to get up.


	2. What would it feel like to put this baggage down?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Matt brings up money, talks to Sister Maggie, and is present at a very special life event.

The back room of Nelson’s Fancy Meats was a little bit of a hazard for Matt, even when he used his cane. Between old clients from the neighborhood and the occasional client who’d followed Foggy from H, B, and C, plus Melvin and some of Matt’s clients from his solo practitioner days, Nelson, Murdock, and Page was thriving. But they hadn’t made the move to a new office yet. Surprisingly enough, Foggy had been the one dragging his feet. Foggy argued that it was a money-saving measure; though that was probably true, at least in part, Matt thought it might also come from a desire on Foggy’s part to make his ‘local boy made good’ roots, firmly established during his short-lived run for DA, outweigh the whiff of corporate sleazeball that some in the neighborhood seemed to attribute to his time at Hogarth, Benowitz, and Chao. So the back room of the shop was piled high with folders and plastic file boxes, and the members of the firm had started to meet clients in the front and then take them for coffee elsewhere.

But neither clients nor Foggy and Karen were there when Matt walked in, just Theo, who was slicing prosciutto and putting together zip-lock bags for the pre-sliced display case.

“Yo, Matt,” he greeted when Matt walked in, “you wanna give me a hand with this?”

“Sure,” said Matt, amused. Like most of Foggy’s family, Theo’s period of being fazed by Matt’s blindness hadn’t lasted long; it was a family where everyone pitched in, and when it came to various odd jobs, Matt had been pressed into service alongside Foggy and his cousins whenever he attended Nelson family gatherings. Working out of the back of the shop, he supposed, had more or less made his law firm into a family gathering.

“You know where the prosciutto goes?” Theo asked, pushing the plastic bags into Matt’s hands.

“Top right hand corner of the case, right?”

Theo shook his head. “Man, how do you _do_ that?”

Matt laughed. “The nose knows,” he said, tapping one side of his nose with the hand not holding the prosciutto.

“You can really smell the difference between, like, prosciutto and capicola, or speck?”

It was always difficult to tell what exactly a ‘normal’ person could smell—Matt hadn’t been ‘normal’ in so long that he couldn’t really remember being unable to smell the tiny differences that set people and things apart from each other—but it was getting tiresome to be assumed to be incompetent in every area of his life, so Matt said, “Sure. Can’t you?”

Theo made a considering noise. “I don’t know, actually. Never tried.”

He and Theo had been working for about ten minutes, Theo occasionally pausing to ask Matt what he smelled in one meat or another, when Foggy walked in. As soon as he saw them, he heaved a sigh. “Matt, you know you don’t have to help him, right?”

Something about the sentence struck a chord in Matt, and he remembered with a sudden rush of nostalgia: Foggy had said that exact thing to him, in that exact tone, the first time he’d had Matt over for Thanksgiving and Theo had passed off his mashed potato duties to Matt. He smiled at the memory. “I know,” he said. “But I figured one of us ought to help pay the rent on our office here.”

Theo’s “Ha!” was triumphant and Foggy’s “Ha ha” unamused.

“Speaking of that,” said Foggy, “Soon as Karen gets in, we need to have a firm meeting.”

Matt frowned. Foggy didn’t sound stressed or angry or afraid, but the formality of a ‘firm meeting’ sounded a little serious. “What about?”

“Well!” Foggy rubbed his hands together. “We don’t have any client meetings on tap for the day, barring walk-ins, so I thought it would be a good time to talk about our long-term plans. Like, it’s not really practical to work out of a butcher shop forever, right?”

“Guess not,” said Matt with a vague feeling of regret. Of course Foggy was right—sooner or later they’d have to develop a more detailed business plan than just ‘take the cases as they come.” But he thought he would miss feeling like a part of the Nelson family’s business. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson and Foggy’s assorted siblings, aunts, grandparents, and cousins were in and out of the shop, and to be surrounded by their good-natured bickering and Foggy’s affectionate annoyance and Karen’s hesitant pleasure and the ever-present smell of meat and cheese was comforting, if a bit overwhelming.

“Not that we can do much right away,” Foggy said. “Marci’s been giving me shit about how sloppy we’ve been about the finances, and, like, yeah, we should probably figure that end of it out. But knowing we _need_ a plan is a good first step, right?”

“Remind me again how you graduated from that fancy law school of yours?” mused Theo, and Foggy flipped him the bird. “Rude,” said Theo.

“What is?” asked Karen. The bell over the door rang as she stepped in, bringing a wave of relatively fresher air in with her.

“Nothing,” said Foggy. “Ignore Theo. Karen, you and me and Mr. Murdock have a date with some fancy coffees and our financial records today. Today is the day we set out Nelson, Murdock, and Page’s grand plan!”

“I don’t know how grand it’s gonna be,” said Karen practically. “I know you’ve got some savings from H, B, and C, Foggy, but I’m strapped, and our clientele so far hasn’t exactly been racking up the billable hours. Let’s maybe keep our expectations reasonable, huh?”

“I have some money,” said Matt, before he could talk himself out of it.

“Yeah, no,” said Foggy dismissively. “After paying Karen back and covering the rent on that loft? I know you get a good deal on the place, but still.”

“No, Foggy,” Matt said, a little steel entering his spine. “Elektra left me a ton of money. Besides what I left to you and Karen, my financial advisor has a shitload of it in interest-bearing annuities and trusts for various charities. I don’t know what I can pull out of what accounts, but I can call and ask her. She knows I’m alive again, so I can set up a meeting.”

Matt could feel Foggy and Karen’s eyes on him, and he swallowed, wishing he’d found a better way to convey that information. “No shit!” said Theo into the silence. “I didn’t know you had money, Matt!”

“Me neither,” said Foggy, and for the life of him, Matt couldn’t have said what emotion was in Foggy’s voice.

There were a lot of things Matt could have said. He could have told them what it was like in the aftermath of Elektra’s death, certain that he had loved her but desperately uncertain of everything else, feeling alone in the world and completely at sea when it came to the complicated set of assets she had left him. He could have told them about calling Marci, the person in his life he was most confident would know the name of a good financial advisor, and meeting Lillian, who was smart and good at explaining things in laymen’s terms and not in the least judgmental, willing to take over managing the estate completely and letting Matt get by on the modest income from his solo practice without making him think too hard about Elektra’s money. He could have explained why he’d made Lillian the executor of his will, after talking it over with her—that he hadn’t wanted to burden Foggy and Karen with it, not when things between them were so strained—and that he couldn’t bear the thought of their judging Elektra, though he knew they both had every reason to judge her, and him.

But Matt didn’t feel like he could explain any of that, standing around in Nelson’s Fancy Meats with everyone’s attention on him. So instead he said, “Come on. We can go get the coffees—my treat—and I’ll give you a quick summary of what we have.”

The day turned out to be less of a grand planning day for Nelson, Murdock, and Page, and more of a series of complicated and delicate navigations through financial and emotional pitfalls. Foggy and Karen hadn’t gotten angry at him, exactly, but Matt was left with the ever-present feeling that he either should have told them something that he hadn’t or had told them something that he shouldn’t have. Which was stupid—it wasn’t his fault they’d made assumptions about the state of his wallet, any more than it was their fault the discussion of the firm’s finances hadn’t come up earlier. It had been a mutual decision to take things on a case-by-case and day-by-day basis. But he was left with a lingering sense of unease that he hated.

As he packed up his things to go at the end of the day, he wondered why everything was taking so long. Why the thought of going back alone to his apartment seemed so unappealing. After the day he had, some time alone would probably be soothing on his nerves. And yet…

Foggy and Karen had gone home, but Theo was still there, wiping down the counters and gathering up trash and scraps and sandwiches that hadn’t sold.

“Need a hand?” Matt asked.

“If you’re offering, sure,” said Theo. “Wanna sweep the floor?”

They worked quietly for a few minutes before Theo asked, “That was kind of weird, today. You know, you and Foggy and Karen running off to talk high finances. What, did you think I was gonna try to scam you out of your investment account or whatever?” This last was kind of belligerent, and Matt sighed.

“No. Not at all, just…there are a lot of personal complications tied up with the person who left me the money. It’s a little awkward.”

Theo shook his head; Matt could hear his hair sweeping gently over his shoulders. “Jesus. It’s always complicated with you guys, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” said Matt unhappily.

“But these days? Alien invasions and mob bosses and earthquakes? Shit, what isn’t complicated?” Theo wiped out the display case for pre-sliced meats. “Makes me grateful for my cat, you know? All she wants is food and to sit on my feet while I watch TV.”

“That sounds nice.” And it did. But as much as Matt wanted to think that things would be better this time around, more stable, longer-lasting, he didn’t think he was ready to have another creature’s life depend entirely on him and his ability to be there when it needed him. That hadn’t really been working out for him lately.

Unless, maybe….

“Hey, Theo,” he asked, “You mind if I take some of the leftovers with me? The ones you were going to throw out anyway?”

“Uh, sure,” said Theo. “I can make you a bag. What for, you composting or something?”

“Stray I’ve been feeding,” Matt explained.

Theo brightened. “Hey, right on. Just don’t let ‘em run your life, you know? Give a cat an inch, she’ll take a mile.”

Matt wasn’t sure how well that applied to raccoons, he reflected. His recurring raccoon wasn’t exactly begging to move in with him, but he’d fed it a few times, and it seemed to recognize him, or at least it wasn’t frightened by him. It had even approached him a few times, making conversational-sounding chattering noises. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering to try to keep the thing around, but he had to admit that he found its obvious pleasure in food and the nonchalant way it reacted to him kind of appealing. His human neighbors had fights and secrets and struggles that he couldn’t do anything about; this neighbor was pretty easy to please.

“What do you think, buddy?” he asked as he fed it the heel of an unsold salami sandwich. “Think I should have brought up the money from Elektra earlier?”

The raccoon enthusiastically shoveled a scrap of meat into its mouth and ignored Matt. He sighed. “Typical.”

The next day was Saturday. A few times since Matt had come back from the dead, he and Karen and Foggy had gone for brunch or coffee and a walk on Saturday mornings, but they hadn’t made any plans the previous day, and Matt figured he was on his own. It was as good a time as ever to say hello to Maggie.

“Matthew,” she greeted him as soon as he entered the church. In the aftermath of Father Lantom’s death, Maggie, who was one of the most senior of the sisters of St. Agnes, had stepped up to cover a lot of Father Lantom’s church duties while the new priest, Father Sullivan, found his feet. Father Sullivan was young and cheerful and talked too fast. Matt had nothing against him, but he found it hard to imagine confiding in him the way he’d confided in Father Lantom. He supposed it was fortunate that he had someone else who was willing to listen.

“Hi,” he said. He was never sure these days what exactly Maggie wanted him to call her—or what he himself wanted to call her. “You have time to talk?”

Her arm swung up—checking a watch, no doubt—and she said, “The parish life committee meets in an hour, but my notes are ready to go for that. I could chat for a while.”

“Great,” Matt said with a smile.

They settled in one of the meeting rooms on the lower level of the church. It was where some of the afterschool programs had been held when Matt was a kid; it was weird how big he felt in the room now. He probably hadn’t been back there since he was in high school. “Now,” said Maggie when they were sitting down with cups of over-strong coffee from the machine in the corner. “What’s the matter with you? You look terrible. Have you been sleeping at all?”

Stung—he hadn’t come to talk about his difficulties sleeping, and besides, he thought he was doing better lately at managing to catch some sleep, even if it was only an hour at a time—he said, “Gee, thanks.”

“I speak from experience when I say that a bad sleep routine will make everything a thousand times worse,” Maggie cautioned. She took a sip of her coffee. “I went years without any caffeine at all. Now look at me, drinking this tar.”

Neither of them mentioned that Father Lantom had made great coffee. Matt frowned. “I don’t think my problem is too much caffeine. And anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

She set her cup down. “All right. What was it you wanted to say?” Her pulse sped up, as if she feared he was going to say something terrible. Well, money was the root of all evil, Matt thought sourly, but he was hardly about to reveal a mortal sin. This time, anyway.

He explained as clearly as he could what had happened with Elektra, speaking about her death and resurrection as vaguely as he could. Getting into the metaphysics of the Hand’s power over immortality wasn’t worth debating with a nun at this juncture. He explained his relationship with her, how she’d come back into his life with the force of a hurricane and left it, and him, with grief and more money than Matt could ever spend in one lifetime. He told her about his conversation with Foggy and Karen the previous day, and his nagging feeling that something was wrong—that he’d said something wrong, or hadn’t said something he shouldn’t, that with the firm moving out of the butcher shop, that something essential was changing or being lost.

When he had finished, Maggie picked up her coffee again and said, “Well, I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Sure, they probably would have liked to hear about the pile of gold you’re sitting on a little sooner, but God knows you’ve all had other things to worry about. I don’t think they’ll hold a grudge.”

“I don’t think it’s about holding a grudge,” Matt said. “It’s not even about the money. It’s….” He shook his head. “I don’t know. The firm’s supposed to be this—this fresh new start for us. For our friendship, and our business, and…I worry that tying that new start up with my and Elektra’s relationship, and all the pain it caused all of us, that maybe I’m dooming us before we even get off the ground.”

Maggie snorted. “My God, you inherited my family’s love of the dramatic. You inherited some money from a woman you loved—a complicated relationship, no doubt, but not one without love—and you’re acting like she left you a curse. You have enough to make your dream firm come true. You know how many children I’ve raised over the years who would kill to be in your shoes?”

“Jesus Christ,” said Matt, his own temper flaring with sudden heat. “I _know_ , because I was _one of them_ , and I don’t think I got a kind word out of you from the ages of ten through eighteen. Don’t tell me how hard the world is for those kids—I _know_ how hard it is, and I don’t get why you think it’s a better strategy to beat me over the head with them than make the world easier for them. God knows you’re in a position to do it.”

He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, but he couldn’t take them back, and a small, resentful part of him—the part that had had its fill of feeling grateful for food in his belly and a roof over his head and money from people he’d rather had kept their money and kept on living—wanted to see how she’d react.

She didn’t, for a long time, just bowed her head over her mug and breathed in deeply. The longer she was quiet, the stupider Matt felt. It wasn’t like he’d needed her to act like she was proud of his good grades or ask about his day—it probably would have struck him as fake if she _had._ And he was a grown man now; she was under no obligation to sit and listen to his ridiculous problems, and she’d been willing to anyway. Stick’s voice, Fisk’s voice, his dad’s voice—they all told him what a whiny, ungrateful little bastard he was. Forget Theo’s cat or the raccoon, he was the one who took a mile if offered an inch.

He was on the brink of opening his mouth to apologize, when she beat him to the punch and said, “You’re right.”

Matt blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re absolutely right. I’m sure the world felt like a very cold and lonely place to you, and I know that I hardly went out of my way to be a source of comfort.” She sighed. “You were a difficult child to get to know—you worked very hard to tell everyone you didn’t need any help, and that you could take care of your own problems.”

He probably _had_ been a difficult child to get to know, thought Matt. Always angry. Always reading or doing homework or sneaking out of his room at night, anything at all to get out of his life. Violent, sometimes, until he learned ways to avoid bullies and protect others from them that didn’t get him in trouble. Not very pleasant. He swallowed. A difficult child for even a mother to love.

But Maggie wasn’t done talking. “But I should have known better. You were a child, and I was a grown woman. I knew that you needed affection, and I didn’t give it. I might have told myself it was to avoid the appearance of favoritism, but it wasn’t. It was because I was too afraid of you rejecting me. You deserved better, Matthew, and I can never apologize enough for that.”

A thousand feelings—anger, self-hate, sadness, regret, things Matt couldn’t name, maybe something like love—warred in his chest, and his eyes were suddenly burning. He tried not to think of times in his life when he would have loved the warm chaos of the Nelson home, or something like it, but it was hard to put those moments entirely out of his mind. “Please don’t,” he said. “Things…things turned out how they turned out. I just—the past shouldn’t keep us from building a better future. Right?”

She reached out to pat his hand, her own hand warm from the coffee mug. “Of course,” she said. “And if you’re asking me for advice, I think you should talk to your friends about how you feel. I should have said that to begin with.”

Matt nodded. He’d answered his own question, he thought—the past shouldn’t keep him and Maggie, or him and Foggy and Karen, from building a better future. He just wished he felt better about it.

It was probably a sign of how messed-up Matt’s life was that, after a brief and fairly uneventful patrol as Daredevil, he went back to sit on the fire escape and feed the raccoon again. Saturday night excitement for the undead vigilante. It probably didn’t need the extra food—between the trash and Matt’s scraps, it was getting even bigger and more awkward—but there was something to what Theo had said: it really was easy to give this little creature exactly what it wanted.

The next morning, Matt decided to take Maggie’s advice. Maybe her particular brand of tough love wore thin sometimes, but she hadn’t been wrong—there was no reason for Elektra’s money to be a stumbling block in the new life he was building, as long as he and Foggy and Karen were on the same page.

He still hesitated before having his phone dial Foggy’s number.

He had thought maybe Marci would pick up the phone, as she had on a few other occasions Matt had called, but Foggy himself answered after only one ring. “Matt,” he said seriously. “What’s up?”

“Nothing bad,” he hastened to establish right away. “I felt like we left things on kind of a strained note on Friday, and I was wondering if you wanted to come over and talk. I’d be happy to make breakfast—or, if you’d rather do something later, I wasn’t planning on going to Mass or the food pantry today, so my schedule’s pretty flexible.”

After a moment, Foggy asked, “You still volunteer at the food pantry?”

Matt shrugged, though there was no one there to see it. “You know Tom. He can always find something for you to do.” Matt wasn’t the most reliable of volunteers—not even close—but he’d been going to the food pantry since he was a little kid, first as a client and then as a volunteer, and the people there knew him. It was a good option for the days he needed something useful to occupy his hands and mind.

“Cool,” said Foggy. “Let me know the next time you go, I’ll come with you. But anyway, yeah, breakfast sounds good. You have stuff for omelets?”

“I do if you like cheese, onions, and/or tomatoes in them,” said Matt. “If you want anything fancier, though, let me know and I can pick it up before you get here.”

“Nah,” said Foggy. “That sounds good. I’ll be over in, like, forty-five minutes?”

True to his word, Foggy appeared at Matt’s door forty minutes later with fresh bacon from the butcher’s shop and croissants from the bakery around the corner. “I come bearing gifts!” he said as Matt let him into the apartment.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Foggy made a nonchalant gesture with the hand holding the bag from the bakery. “Eh. I mean, it’s kind of a gift for me, too, ‘cause I am definitely going to be eating these croissants, too.”

Matt frowned. There was something…something a little hollow in Foggy’s voice, like he was putting on a cheerful front over something a lot less happy. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You sound a little off.”

“Fine,” said Foggy with a finality that didn’t invite further questions. “Let’s get this breakfast going.”

When they were settled at the table and had taken the edge off their hunger with omelets and bacon and baked goods, Foggy asked, “So, what did you want to talk about?”

Matt sat up straighter, going over the things he had meant to say in his mind. “I know that you were surprised the other day, when I offered to put some of the money Elektra left me in the firm. But I wasn’t sure if it was just surprise, or if there’s a bigger problem. I mean, I can’t fix the issue if I don’t know what the issue is.”

Foggy sighed, pushing his plate away. “I’m not sure you can fix this particular issue, anyway.”

That sounded ominous. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?”

“Ugh.” Foggy groaned, and Matt thought he was rolling his eyes. “Don’t mind me. It was great of you to offer the money, and we can definitely use it. This is a ‘me’ thing, don’t worry about it.”

“What’s a ‘you’ thing?” asked Matt, baffled.

“Seriously, this is really petty.”

“Petty’s fine with me.” Matt wondered if he should stop pushing, and he resolved that if Foggy brushed him off again, he would.

“Okay.” Foggy leaned in over the table, putting himself a little closer, as if he was afraid someone would hear them. “Here’s the thing. When I thought you died, I guess—I guess I was surprised and kind of hurt when I found out that you changed your will and got a new executor and I didn’t even know about it. Which, I know, that’s unreasonable, we were barely talking at the time, and it’s stupid to think you wouldn’t redo your will after Elektra…after Elektra left you all that money, but....”

“I’m sorry,” said Matt, feeling helpless. “I just, at the time, I didn’t think you really wanted to deal with my money issues.”

“No, no, I totally get it,” said Foggy. “But then I was telling Marci about all this, and she was telling me how she referred you to Lillian, and then I got really pissed that she’d been talking to you about that stuff without telling me, and she told me it was none of my business, then or now, who she talked to, and we fought, and it’s just…ugh. It’s a pile of money, a lot of which is going to really good organizations and a big chunk of which is going to make our firm awesome. I don’t know why I can’t just be happy about it.”

“I’m sorry you and Marci fought.” Matt didn’t know what to say to the rest of it.

“Psshh,” said Foggy dismissively. “Whatever. It’s fine, I’ll get over it and make it up to her. And I know Karen’s take on the whole thing is a little different from mine—all she knows about Elektra is the bad stuff—but it’s not like she’s gonna say, ‘Screw that money, let’s just run the firm out of a lemonade stand,’ you know? She knows more about running a business than the two of us put together, and I bet she’s already got plenty of ideas for what to do with some extra cash.”

Matt nodded. Foggy was probably right. “Yeah. I’m, ah. I’m sorry I didn’t talk with you about it earlier, I just—I guess didn’t want to push when it came to making the firm more permanent. I want things to move at whatever pace you want them to move, okay?”

“Okay, Matt,” said Foggy, “but do you realize you’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ four times in the last five minutes? Over something that’s genuinely not a real problem?”

“Well,” Matt said, rolling his eyes inwardly at his own absurdity, “I’ve been told I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“Who told you that?”

Matt hesitated. He hadn’t really talked much with Foggy about his mother. He knew she was a nun at St. Agnes, that she’d helped him, and later Karen, when Poindexter attacked the church, and that she and Matt were talking again. If he had opinions on it other than ‘Wow,’ and ‘That’s wild, good for you, man,’—and Matt thought he probably did—he’d been keeping them to himself.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Foggy said quickly. “I get that we’ve probably hit your quota on talking about feelings for the day.”

They’d talked about Foggy’s feelings, sure. But Matt’s feelings, not so much. He thought again of Maggie—of his mother—telling him that he had been a difficult child to get to know, and before he could talk himself out of it, he said, “My mother said that. When I talked to her yesterday.”

Slowly, with pauses for refills of coffee and pastries, Matt told Foggy about the conversation he and Maggie had had yesterday. He was as honest as he could be, though he tried to keep the details of his own dramatics to a minimum.

When he was finished, Foggy said, “Wow.”

Matt huffed out a laugh, though he was more surprised than amused. “Good wow, bad wow….?”

“More like, ‘you make more and more sense to me all the time’ wow.” Before Matt could ask what he meant by that, he asked, “So, how are you feeling now? You mad at her, feeling all warm and fuzzy, feeling like she kind of missed her chance to actually parent you?” Then, self-deprecatingly, “Feeling like you’d rather eat rocks than talk to me about this?”

“It’s not that,” said Matt automatically, though he wasn’t exactly enthused about the direction the conversation had taken. “I guess I regret the lost time. But it’s hard to blame her for that. She was going through a lot at the time.”

Foggy laughed incredulously. “And you weren’t?”

“That was different,” said Matt.

“Yeah, because you were a kid who’d just been in a traumatic accident and whose dad had been murdered and who’d been ‘tutored’ by an asshole from a secret ninja organization, and she was an adult who’d gotten help and specifically put herself in a position where her job was to help kids in need.”

“Objection,” Matt said weakly.

“On what grounds?” Foggy sighed, and when he spoke again, some of the fight had gone out of his words. “Look, I think it’s great that she’s back in your life, okay, and I’m not about to jump on her for having postpartum depression. That would be a dick move. But here’s the thing. I know you’re all about forgiveness and second chances, but don’t be in too big a hurry to forgive her, okay? I mean, it’s not like I forgave _you_ right away.”

“No, of course not.” Why had Matt thought this breakfast was a good idea? How had he let the conversation come to this point? Why hadn’t he just spent the morning with the raccoon and called it a day?

“I mean, I feel like we’re good now, but I swear to God, after the firm broke up the first time, I went through all five stages of grief and then went back and did anger again. And then, you know, I did it all over again when I thought you died. I had all these fantasies of you coming back from the dead and me, just, like, knocking you out with one punch.”

Matt felt very small. “You can if you want,” he said. “I’d deserve it.”

“Could you let me finish before you throw yourself on the pyre?”

Matt swallowed his response and nodded.

“The point is, I didn’t _stay_ angry forever. And the longer I had to think, the more I thought about the weird-ass situations you were in, and how I would have acted in your shoes. About how I _did_ act, and what I could have done differently. As much fun as it was to blame you for everything up to and including kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, it didn’t do much to change the fact that a lot of those situations were a lot bigger than you and me, and honestly, I don’t know that I would have handled them much better than you did.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t fuck up,” said Matt.

“Of course it doesn’t,” said Foggy. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying….” Foggy tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, as if Mr. Hart from upstairs would give him answers in Morse Code through the floor. “I’m saying that taking that time to think things through made me see things more clearly. And don’t you dare make a blind joke. You know, one of the things I thought about a lot when I thought you were dead?”

Matt shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice right now.

“I thought about how I had Karen and Marci to lean on. And they were great, and I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without them. And I thought about how you lost Elektra—twice—and you went through that grief by yourself. I never even told you I was sorry she died.”

“It’s not like I ever asked you to,” Matt said. “You never even liked her.”

“But _you_ did. Anyway.” He tapped his spoon against his coffee cup. “That’s the kind of thing you think about when you have the time to think about that stuff. You get to think about how things went down, and how you want things to be the next time around. So maybe just—get angry at your mom if you need to. You don’t have to go yell at her or anything, but I’m not gonna tell if you complain about her to me. I want to be there for you, man.”

“You are,” Matt protested. “You’re great, Foggy.”

“Well, thanks, buddy,” said Foggy. “But I know I’ve been kind of…I don’t know, putting a band-aid on all the shit we’ve gone through lately. Like, I was so happy you were back, I didn’t want to talk about anything that was too heavy. I keep dragging my feet on everything.”

“You’re _fine_ , Foggy,” Matt insisted. “We’re doing _fine._ ”

 “I agree, man,” said Foggy matter-of-factly. “I haven’t been this happy in I don’t even know how long. You being back, working with you again, I’m living the dream. But it doesn’t mean we don’t still have issues. I like pretending everything’s perfect as much as the next guy, but I think this thing where we actually talk about our problems is better. I mean it’s the better move, right?”

“I’m gonna come off like an asshole if I say no, aren’t I?” Matt thought he did a pretty good job of keeping his voice steady. His heart was so full of…of something, right now, that it felt like it was blocking his throat. Foggy was _happy._ And despite everything, so was Matt.

He didn’t know how he’d ever thought he would be able to get along without Foggy. Foggy was right. Their being united again was living the dream. Just being next to him made Matt feel like his whole body was alive, like his feelings and his past and his senses and everything came together to make a whole person for once in his life.

Holy shit.

“Yeah, well, you coming off like an asshole wouldn’t be anything new, would it?” asked Foggy lightly, but Matt could barely process what he was saying. Because that feeling, that feeling like all the stars had aligned to put him with this person at this one specific time, that was a feeling he’d only ever had around Elektra.

Holy shit.

“Matt. Buddy.” Foggy’s hand was heavy on his forearm. “Did we short-circuit you? Man, I knew all this mushy heart-to-heart stuff was gonna be too much.”

Matt cleared his throat. This was—this was huge. It was too much to lay on Foggy now. Or possibly ever. So instead, he said, “Nah. I’m fine. I was just thinking, we should apply for grants for the practice. Especially now that we have a prestigious writer on staff.”

“Not much of a segue, dude,” said Foggy, but he was kind enough not to dwell on it, and luckily for the state of Matt’s heart, he removed his hand from Matt’s arm. “But it’s not a bad idea. Getting some money from places that aren’t our bank accounts can only be for the good.”

“It’s not even just about the money,” Matt pointed out, “but it could be a motivation for us to lay out a clear plan for the firm, and it might be useful in advertising.”

“Holy shit, I never thought the day would come when I heard Matt Murdock talk about something being good for advertising!” Foggy crowed.

They talked through the idea a little more and did some web searching for possible grants to apply to before Foggy declared they could go no further before looping Karen in. Matt didn’t mind. He was exhilarated—exhausted, but happy in a way he didn’t think he’d been in a long time. This new love for Foggy didn’t have to be a problem. He could keep it to himself, and channel it into being a better friend. They’d laid a good foundation today, he thought. And Foggy was used to weird behavior from him, so if Matt hadn’t been able to scare him off yet, surely a well-hidden crush wouldn’t be the end of things. Matt was optimistic. This could be the start of something. Maybe something that would last.

That night, he took the leftover croissants out to the raccoon, in a celebratory mood, but for once, the raccoon didn’t seem interested in food. Somehow, it had made it onto the roof from the fire escape, and was huddled in the shelter of one corner, squatting awkwardly and making strange, whimpering sorts of noises.

Matt paused. He wished, in retrospect, that he’d done a little research into what the symptoms of rabies were in raccoons.

He was about to turn to leave, when the raccoon made a particularly loud noise, and Matt, who hadn’t been paying close attention to the raccoon’s vital signs, was suddenly aware of another heartbeat, a smaller, quieter, faster one. Not just one. Multiple little heartbeats, moving down and from inside the raccoon.

“Oh,” said Matt, suddenly aware of what he was witnessing, and why the raccoon had been so hungry and big. “Happy birthday, little guys.”


	3. No, I choose to believe that I was made to become a sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which five baby raccoons grow up, Foggy and Marci break up, and Foggy and Matt get hammered.

In the aftermath of his new raccoon friend’s labor, Matt spent a lot of time on Google and Wikipedia learning about raccoons. He was at an advantage in that they had their mother, who was likely to nourish them for months to come and share hunting ground with them even after that; but after learning some distressing facts about mortality rates for raccoons from being hit by cars or eaten by predators, Matt felt a responsibility to see that these five little beings made it to adulthood. The world probably didn’t need more raccoons, but it was hard to imagine how he could possibly not take an interest.

They were tiny, and didn’t do much except squeak all the time, but there were still enough differences between them that Matt thought he could reliably tell them apart. He had no idea how many were male and how many female, but he called them Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, in order of size, and their mother, who made a variety of noises these days to her babies and occasionally to Matt, was of course named Mrs. Bennet. After apparently deciding that Matt posed no threat to her babies, Mrs. Bennet let him come close enough to touch them. He didn’t try to pick them up, as tolerant as Mrs. Bennet had been so far—feeling their tiny fast heartbeats under his fingers, the little movements as their ribs expanded and contracted, impressed him with such a strong sense of their fragility and his own potential for destruction that it sent a chill up his spine.

 _The neighbor brought home a box of stray kittens. I killed them with rocks, Doctor._ Matt swallowed. He hadn’t thought of the voice of young Poindexter on those tapes in a long time, now. He wasn’t above taking pleasure in others’ pain, much as he tried not to let that be a factor in the actions he took as Daredevil. It was intertwined, he thought, with the desire to win and the desire to enact justice for people who had evaded it—a desire for power, in other words. But the thought of hurting these trusting, small, helpless things made the power to cause pain seem poisonous, revolting.

He wondered if he could build some kind of shelter for the litter. Or if he could somehow persuade Mrs. Bennet to come inside. He wasn’t wildly enthused about the idea of sharing his space with half a dozen raccoons, but….

He stroked a finger down Mary’s back, light enough that she didn’t squirm under his touch but only sighed.

As the little raccoons grew, so did the firm. They organized a list of possible grants and began working on applications; they contacted a real estate agent and started looking for office space; they drew up a business plan for advertising purposes. In their time apart, Matt and Foggy had developed new areas of expertise; Matt was pleased but not surprised that Foggy had picked up some experience with family and divorce law at H, B, and C, and Foggy was both pleased and surprised that Matt had experience and contacts with local immigration legal aid clinics. Karen, meanwhile, had decided to pick up on some of the formal training she’d foregone over the years, and was spending a lot of her free time working on course in law and business management from ESU. Matt was proud of her, but was also selfishly glad for the time he got alone with Foggy.

So far, he’d kept his crush under control (it was more than a crush, but since nothing could ever come of it, might as well call it that). It hadn’t made things awkward; instead, things seemed to be getting easier between him and Foggy, easier than they’d been since before Daredevil.  Foggy was still upset on the occasions that Matt came in with minor Daredevil-related injuries, but not so upset that they couldn’t talk about it, or about Maggie, or about Foggy’s squabbles with his family about his profession and his life choices and his taste in ties.

Whether it was this new openness between them, or the excitement and determination that came with having more concrete plans for the firm, or the fact that he had the company of six inarticulate but noisy raccoons to come home to at night, Matt was sleeping better, too. All in all, he felt…happy, for lack of a better word.

Something about it must have shown on his face, because a few weeks after the litter was born, Foggy asked him, “What gives, Matt?”

“Huh?”

“You’ve been in a good mood lately,” said Foggy. “Hasn’t he been in a good mood, Karen?”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” said Karen, jubilant. “He’s part of the firm that got Mrs. Santorino’s son released without pressing charges _and_ got an apology from the NYPD.”

“Should have gotten some kind of compensation,” Matt protested, but neither Foggy nor Karen dignified this with a response; all three of them knew that the evidence of the police planting drugs was way too scant for pushing their argument to accomplish anything but pissing the NYPD off.

“Well, that would be enough for _me_ to be in a good mood,” Foggy said. “But Matt, I haven’t seen you this happy since…God, I don’t even know when.” His voice trailed off at the end, losing its buoyancy and filling with something a lot sadder and heavier.

Matt wanted to head that off at the pass as quickly as he could. He hated it when Foggy was sad—anger was so much easier to deal with. At the same time, though, telling Foggy and Karen that he’d become the godfather to a litter of baby raccoons seemed…he didn’t want them to tell him he was being stupid. He was gradually getting used to fielding critiques on his Daredevilling or his interactions with his mother, but this was so new, and special, and so unlikely to end in anything worse than the untimely death of one of the raccoon babies—nothing that could hurt Foggy and Karen, nothing that he was obliged to share with them. He wasn’t ready to share this new and special little world with them, not yet.

So he said, with perfect honesty, “I feel really good about the direction we’re going in, you know, both professionally and personally. I don’t want to get complacent, but you’re right, I’ve been really happy lately.”

Foggy paused for a moment, then reached out to squeeze Matt’s shoulder companionably. Matt’s heart fluttered. Foggy had been doing that a lot more lately, touching Matt with friendly back pats and hugs, and it was the most wonderful kind of painful every time. “I feel good about it too, buddy,” said Foggy warmly. “And I’m glad you’re happy.”

That night, when he got home after a long day and drinks with Foggy and Karen afterwards, he realized that something was different with the raccoon kits. They seemed more active, moving as he got closer to point their little bodies in his direction. It was almost like…

Either their ears or their eyes, or both, had opened, he realized. It was the right time for it. Either they heard or saw him coming. They were growing up.

“Oh, wow,” he said, kneeling next to the little den Mrs. Bennet had built in the corner. “Congratulations.”

Lydia squeaked and thrust her tiny nose into his hand. Jane nibbled on one of his fingers.

Matt smiled, and tried not to feel any regret at the reminder that they wouldn’t stay babies forever. That soon enough they’d be roaming outside the den and that eventually, once they were old enough to find food on their own, they’d leave and go their separate ways.

His life was going in the right direction. It was only right and natural that their lives, too, would keep progressing.

Things proceeded apace for almost two months, the kits getting bigger and more active and the firm becoming more like a real law firm. They moved out of the butcher shop into a decent but unimposing suite of offices a few blocks away; they worked on their ongoing cases (Melvin’s, in particular, was likely to lead to his release in the near future, thanks to lingering goodwill from Blake Tower) and took on new ones. Things, Matt thought, were going well.

And so it hit Matt out of nowhere when Karen said, “Foggy, what’s wrong?” in distressed tones when Foggy walked in one morning. Matt frowned, worried, and irritated at himself for not noticing the heaviness in Foggy’s step and lack of cheerful greeting.

“Eh,” said Foggy dismissively. “No biggie. Marci and me decided to go our separate ways last night. Called it all quits. No hard feelings, we’re still friends, et cetera. But I was up pretty late last night, so if I’m looking less than my usual dapper, sparkling self, that’s why.”

Now Matt was genuinely concerned. “What happened?” He didn’t socialize all that much with Marci, who was working long corporate hours to match his and Foggy’s long local start-up hours, but the few times she’d come out to dinner and drinks with him and Foggy and Karen, she and Foggy had seemed happy together. Far happier than they’d been when they dated in law school, honestly, more supportive and much less prone to arguing in public and passive-aggressive sniping. And with Matt and Foggy talking more now, and more honestly, he thought he would have heard if they’d been having problems.

Karen jabbed him in the side with her elbow and said, probably low enough to be inaudible to someone without unusually keen hearing, “Shut up and don’t pry.” To Foggy, she said, “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I know you guys have been through a lot—are you feeling okay about it?”

Foggy shrugged. “Okay as can be expected, I guess. I mean, these things aren’t ever fun, but I think it was the right call.” He nodded, as if to himself, and repeated, “I think it was the right call.”

Matt felt—he felt the kind of unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach that he always seemed to feel when Foggy was unhappy, but now there was an added layer to it. There was a time when he would have been familiar with every up and down in Foggy’s relationships, when they would have talked about Foggy’s hopes and fears for them over drinks or a pizza on a Saturday night. He had thought that they were closer to that kind of friendship now—after all, they’d been having heart-to-hearts about everything from Foggy’s nightmares when Matt had ‘died’ to Matt’s experiences with childhood bullies.

But Karen clearly knew things that he didn’t, about all the things that had happened between the time of Foggy and Matt’s tentative pre-Midland Circle reconnection, when Foggy’s discussions about Marci had been limited to bragging about having sex with her, and their engagement. Forget this being his chance to woo Foggy—that was never going to happen—he apparently wasn’t close enough to Foggy for them to talk about his relationship troubles with Marci.

He knew that things could have been different—if the Hand hadn’t brought Elektra back, if Stick hadn’t insisted on his getting involved, if Foggy hadn’t put him in Jessica Jones’s path, if he himself had wanted to live just a little bit more than he wanted Elektra to live or to at least die with her soul freed from the Hand—and that blaming anyone for how events had turned out was pointless. But it didn’t stop him from feeling something cold and lonely and hurt under his concern for Foggy, and so it wasn’t entirely selfless motives that made him say, “Hey, Fog. Come over to my place after work today. You, me, and all the cheap beer and Jäger your heart could desire. We’ll get takeout. What do you say?”

“I gotta say,” said Foggy, heaving out a sigh, “there’s a certain appeal in that plan. Karen, don’t suppose you’re interested?”

“As tempting as that sounds,” said Karen, in tones that made it clear she didn’t find it tempting at all, “I’ve got dinner plans with Ellison and some _Bulletin_ people. But you guys have fun.”

The day didn’t do much to distract them from their private woes and thoughts—it was the kind of day that involved going through piles of paperwork, in Matt’s case wrestling with some unbelievably bad document formatting, and in Karen’s case making a lot of phone calls. They grabbed chicken and broccoli and egg rolls from the local Chinese place for lunch and chatted about nothing in particular over their meal, going back to work after twenty minutes.

But when Karen caught a cab for her dinner with the reporters and Foggy and Matt started the walk back to Matt’s apartment, the façade of cheery productivity Foggy had put on all day started to fade.

This was probably the point at which a good friend would come up with something smart and supportive and good to say, but Foggy was unfortunately stuck with Matt, who couldn’t think of anything to say or do but to hold onto Foggy’s arm. Bystanders would think Foggy was doing a good deed, but hopefully Foggy would know Matt was doing it because it was the best kind of comfort he could think to offer.

When they got to Matt’s place, Matt took a quick few seconds to listen in on the babies—awake, active, and hungry, but Mrs. Bennet was on the case, so there was nothing to worry about there—before handing Foggy a beer.

“Thanks, man,” said Foggy, and Matt gave him what he was sure was the worst facsimile of a smile ever produced by a human face.

“Sure,” he said.

They sat on the couch with their beers for a seemingly endless couple of minutes before Matt worked up the courage to say, “Do you…do you want to talk about it?”

Foggy shrugged. “I don’t know. Not much to say, I guess.” Another pause followed, in which Matt tried to think of another direction to take the conversation.

“Okay,” he said. “We can talk about something else if you want.”

He hadn’t been implying anything, but Foggy seemed to think he was taking offense, because he sighed and said, “Sorry, it’s not—whatever. She told me she needed to be in a relationship in which she got out of it even one tenth of what she was putting into it. Those exact words.”

Matt sucked his breath through his teeth. He’d always felt he was the one getting more out of his relationships than he offered, but he hated to think that Foggy felt like that. “That’s pretty harsh,” he said, as neutrally as he could.

“She’s not wrong.” Foggy took a long sip of his beer. “She really…she was so great. She cared about my professional success, she was there for me through all the various emotional ups and downs, just…she was a trooper. And I legit was not putting in half that effort for her. I don’t blame her for ending things. She deserved better.”

“It…it’s not like I’ve never been there,” Matt offered hesitantly. “She loves you, Foggy, and I’m sure if you went back with a plan to do things differently, she’d be willing to give it another try.”

Foggy leaned back against the couch, resting his head against the back of it. “Nah,” he said slowly. “Marci’s not really the kind to keep throwing herself after lost causes. That’s always been more my speed.”

Matt wondered if one of the ‘lost causes’ was him. It seemed likely. He shifted in his seat, first away from Foggy and then back toward him. He couldn’t undo the past, but he could be here for Foggy now. “What do you need?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Foggy. “Sitting here drinking beer seems okay.” His shoulder knocked against Matt’s, leaving a bright spot of warmth.

They knocked back a few beers before digging into the Jägermeister. Foggy was going through it fast, clearly drinking to get drunk. Matt, a perennial lightweight, was taking it a lot slower; ever since Midland Circle, alcohol had affected his balance more than it had before, and combined with the fuzziness of drunkenness, one drink too much of the hard stuff was likely to take him out of commission for the night. As the host, Matt ordered them some pizza from the place two blocks over. Eating seemed to put a little more wind back in Foggy’s sails, and they watched old episodes of _The Office_ and _M*A*S*H*_ to get Foggy’s mind off of things.

“Ugh,” groaned Foggy when they finished the first of the _M*A*S*H*_ Christmas episodes, “I drank too much. I gotta stop doing this.”

“Let me get you some water,” said Matt, but Foggy grabbed at his arm and pulled him back down onto the couch.

“That’s okay.” Foggy downed the rest of his Jägermeister-and-root beer combo in one gulp, and Matt grimaced. “I broke up with my fiancée, I got drunk, I’m gonna pass out on your couch. That’s totally a thing people do, right? They break up, they get drunk, and they move on with their lives. Who needs relationships anyway, right?”

“Sure,” said Matt.

“It’s not like…it’s not like you have to do the two point five kids and a dog thing to be happy. And Marci’s, like, not that type, anyway.”

“Also true.” He was tipsy enough that getting into a fight would be dangerous, but not so tipsy, he thought, that he couldn’t make it to the sink for water too quickly for Foggy to stop him.

“But see, Marci’s thing is, she knows what she wants. You know? She wants the success, and the prestige, and maybe to rule the world, and she’s willing to commit to that. Me?” Foggy sighed. “I _want_ that stuff, but only, like half the time. Or maybe _all_ the time but only half as much. I don’t know. Matt?”

His escape to the sink had been well and truly cut off, now—Foggy had been distracted, but now he had turned his body to face Matt, and his voice had taken on an earnestness that Matt couldn’t refuse, not now. “Yeah, Foggy?”

“How do you—I mean, in law school, you were _so_ clear on what you wanted. You were _so_ into using the law to fight the good fight. Top of our class, awards coming out your ass, and all you ever wanted was to help people who couldn’t afford good lawyers and, like, change the world one court case at a time. And then Daredevil—” Foggy shook his head. “Daredevil doesn’t give a shit about the law. Daredevil breaks into buildings and puts mobsters in comas. And I always wondered, like, how do you want things that are that different? How do you make them work?”

Matt couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Uh, Foggy, I think if you asked most people, I _haven’t_ been able to make those two things work.”

“I don’t mean in real _life_ ,” Foggy insisted. “I mean in your _head_. How do you make them work?”

Some of the alcohol’s fuzziness wore off at that. Foggy might have been toasted off his ass, but the question was a serious one, and deserved a serious answer. He sat in quiet for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. “There’s this place in Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,” he said finally, “where he says ‘justice without mercy is cruelty, while mercy without justice is the mother of destruction.’ For me, I guess, my justification for Daredevil to exist is that—that kind of balance. You know, balancing the rights of the accused for fair treatment and representation of their interests against the rights of society to live their lives in safety. The need for justice for both sides. As a lawyer, I can help if the power’s too much on society’s side…and then as Daredevil, I can help if the power’s too much on the offender’s side. I think the thing is—the powerful are always more likely to win, whether they’re on the side of the state or the side of the accused. I like to think I’m balancing the scales. I don’t know.”

Matt had half expected that Foggy would fall asleep during this little speech. But he didn’t. He took in a shaky breath, and Matt could smell salt on the air. “Jesus, Matt,” he said, his voice unsteady. “I missed you so much. When you were gone, and I thought you were _dead,_ and then when you were _there_ but not really _there_ , I just—but you’re _here_ now. The real you.”

Tears were burning at Matt’s own eyes now. He couldn’t blame Foggy for his phrasing; for a long time, he hadn’t felt like the real him. Or a real anything. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “You’re—I want to be here for you, Foggy.”

“I know, man,” said Foggy. “And I’m so—I’m so….” He scooted closer, and Matt readied himself for a hug. But instead, Foggy—

His hands were on Matt’s face, all of a sudden, and he was kissing Matt. Not on the cheek, not an affectionate little peck, but a full-fledged kiss, with a little tongue and everything.

If Matt’s reflexes had been at full speed, it might have ended badly, but they weren’t, so instead of automatically switching into fight mode, Matt just sat there, stiff with shock. Foggy pulled away almost instantly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Matt, I didn’t mean to….”

“Shh,” said Matt, wondering if he was dreaming. “It’s okay, you just—you just broke up with your girlfriend, and you’re drunk out of your mind. Let me just—I’ll get you some water and a blanket, and you should get some sleep.”

Foggy nodded meekly. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”

Matt gathered the water and a pillow and blanket for Foggy, who stayed quiet and small on the couch. He lay the blanket on the coffee table and aimed the best smile he could manage in Foggy’s direction. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Okay,” said Foggy, sounding exhausted all of a sudden.

Matt waited until Foggy was asleep, and then he called Karen. She didn’t pick up, so he left a message saying that Foggy wasn’t going to be in any condition to go to work in the morning, so the two of them would be taking a sick day. Then he dialed a number he hadn’t called in a long time.

Marci picked up after two rings. “Matt?”

“Hi, Marci. I thought I should let you know, Foggy’s at my place. He’s okay, but he’s gonna sleep here tonight.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said. She sounded less…less vibrant, Matt supposed, than he was used to. Less like she was ready to plow through a brick wall and keep going. He and Marci had never had much in common besides Foggy—she thought he was mentally unstable, he thought some of her politics were horseshit—but they’d always had a healthy mutual respect for each other, perpetually in competition for top of the class, editor of the _Columbia Law Review_ , the internships, the prizes. She had never been the kind to settle for second place. Matt wasn’t used to hearing her sounding so defeated.

“You gonna be okay, Marci?”

She made a rude noise. “After the last year, this is the least of my problems. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Matt. They weren’t really friends. He wasn’t really in a position to offer her comfort, and he doubted she’d accept if he offered.

“Thanks for hosting Foggy-Bear, though,” she said in a resigned voice. “Take care of him, okay?”

It was a tall order, but one that Matt had been determined to do a better job on this time. “Will do,” he promised.

After he hung up with Marci, he went up onto the roof to sit with the raccoons. His mind was racing. Foggy had _kissed_ him. Foggy had kissed _him_. It had happened so quickly, Matt had hardly had the presence of mind to even register it, but in retrospect, details were flitting in and out of his mind, like the texture of Foggy’s chapped lips, the way his breath had tasted of pepperoni and alcohol, the pulse of his heart. It didn’t do to read too much into it, Matt told himself sternly. Everything he had said to Foggy was true—Foggy was drunk and in a state of emotional vulnerability. Matt himself was clearly a point of emotional vulnerability, but that didn’t mean Foggy felt—Matt thought Foggy might have been attracted to him at one time, but that didn’t mean Foggy felt—

Mrs. Bennet made a plaintive noise that Matt had come to associate with a request for food, and Matt sighed and fed her a granola bar he’d brought with him. Raccoons were a lot simpler, he thought.

It was a risky proposition, leaving Foggy alone in the morning, but he was still dead to the world on the couch when the city began to wake up, and Matt felt a desperate need to talk to someone. He dictated a text to Foggy and left Foggy’s phone on the coffee table next to him, then headed in the direction of Clinton Church. He knew from long experience that they kept early hours there.

The new priest was the first to greet him; despite his reluctance to get close to Father Sullivan, his newfound relationship with Maggie had made him a regular at parish events. Father Sullivan took his early arrival and lack of interest in making small talk with his general good grace, and was happy to direct him to Maggie’s room. Matt tried his best to be grateful and not irritated at the man’s insistence on taking his arm.

“Well, you’re up early, Matthew,” said Maggie. And then, with more concern, “Or up late. Did you sleep at all last night?”

“I didn’t,” said Matt, “but that’s not really the point. I don’t think I—I’m not sure this is the kind of situation that requires advice, but I had to tell someone about it anyway.”

Maggie stood from her desk chair, took Matt’s hand, and guided him to sit next to her on the bed. “All right,” she said, not letting go of his hand. “Tell me what you need to tell me.”

“My friend broke up with his girlfriend,” Matt said haltingly. “And I invited him over, and we were drinking, and he kissed me. And the thing is, I think I’m in love with him, but I don’t think he’s in love with me, so I don’t—I don’t know what to do with all this.”

Maggie sat in shocked silence, and it occurred to Matt that she was only now learning that her son was interested in men as well as women. He had reserves of rejection and pain and righteous indignation to draw on if she pulled away from him now, and he steeled himself against the possibility. But Maggie wasn’t the sort to stay shocked for long, and after a moment, she said, “I think I need more details here. Which friend is this?”

Matt filled in the details in as orderly a fashion as he could, though he kept remembering things that it seemed important for Maggie to know, things about Foggy’s family, or the way Foggy had called him hot when they first met, or the recurring theme of their napkin signs.

When he finally petered out, Maggie said, “Oh, my.” To Matt’s surprise, her hand came up to brush a stray hank of hair out of his eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’d honestly thought I’d missed my chance to help my son through his love troubles.”

“There’s really only one thing to do, right?” Matt said. “He wasn’t thinking clearly last night, and he’s in a bad place. So I just—I let him say his piece, and I do my best to be a good friend to him. I mean, my feelings don’t really come into it, do they?”

“Matthew, I think you’ve spent far too much time in your life telling yourself your feelings don’t come into it,” said Maggie. “But in your defense, I think you’ve had lots of people, including me, telling you that as well. Here, though….” She sighed. “You’re right, I don’t think your friend is ready to leap headfirst into another relationship. But I have to tell you, I don’t think the case is as hopeless as you think.”

“What do you mean?” asked Matt with a frown.

“I mean that I had several heartbreaks when I was a young girl, and I never felt the urge to kiss any of the friends helping me through them.”

“Foggy’s a pretty touchy-feely kind of guy, though.”

“You mean that he goes around kissing random people?” asked Maggie, sounding profoundly unimpressed.

“No. No, I mean, of course not, but he and I….”

She squeezed his hand. “Yes, exactly. You and him. You have the kind of relationship where it seems perfectly natural to you that he would kiss you when he’s feeling vulnerable. And where it seems perfectly natural to you that, having just broken up with his fiancée, he begins crying and telling you how much he’s missed you.” She shook her head. “I have to say, I think I can see why this Marci broke up with him. I don’t think I’d want to marry a man whose most profound emotional commitment was to someone else.”

”You think I’m the other woman,” Matt said. The idea tasted sour to him. He and Marci might not have been friends, but he didn’t like the idea of ruining what might have been a happy life for her.

Maggie hummed thoughtfully. “I think your friend has made choices that suggest his relationship with you is more important to him than most of the other relationships in his life. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that, as long as he deals honestly with the other people he loves, but people certainly have the right to look for more. You have the right to look for more, too, by the way,” she added. “Martyrdom is all well and good in its place, Matthew, but don’t you think it’s a bit absurd to sit around pining in silence for someone who clearly already cares greatly for you?”

Matt swallowed. Hope was all well and good—hope had gotten him through things he shouldn’t have been able to accomplish before—but it wasn’t enough to risk Foggy’s heart. Or maybe even his own heart. “It doesn’t mean he’s in love with me.”

“No,” Maggie acknowledged. “But it does mean that, after everything else your friendship has gone through, I don’t think he’ll leave you if you tell him that you’d rather he didn’t kiss you like that if he doesn’t mean it.”

When she put it like that, Matt thought she was right. Foggy had had far, far better reasons to leave him in the past. But if he left Matt again now, it seemed…it didn’t seem likely that it would be over an honest, emotional discussion about Foggy’s behavior when drunk, and what, exactly, it had meant to Matt.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely to her. “I think that puts things in perspective for me.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “And…” she hesitated. “Thank you. I’m grateful that you came to me with this.”

They weren’t the hugging kind, Matt and Maggie. But Matt had a sudden memory of being ten years old, his father dead for barely a month, his dreams full of nightmares that he didn’t yet know were real, nightmares full of violence and death and pain. And he remembered calling out in the night, and Maggie’s presence solid beside him, her arms around him, her voice in his ears, giving him something other than sirens to focus on. “Do you…do you want to hug?” he asked before he could talk himself out of it.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I do.”

She was shockingly small in his arms. It was hard to remember how large she had seemed in the past, one more of a series of adults whose control over his life had to be carefully negotiated in order for Matt to escape. He didn’t want to escape her, now. He wanted to be the kind of person who could make even a difficult relationship work. And it helped that he knew that she wanted that, too.

By the time he got back to his apartment, Foggy was awake and moving around. He’d made coffee in Matt’s machine, and Matt could smell eggs and cheese sitting on the counter.

“Hey,” he said when he opened the door, “who’s the host here?”

“Got me,” Foggy shot back. “Only one of us was around when I woke up.” Almost immediately he added, in a more serious tone of voice. “Seriously, though, thanks for letting me stay over last night. And…” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the whole ‘kissing you’ thing. It was way out of line. So, sorry, and thanks for being so nice about shutting me down.”

“You were pretty fried last night,” said Matt carefully. “I knew you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Right, yeah,” said Foggy. But he didn’t sound like what Matt had said had made him feel any better.

In what was probably one of the many stupid, impulsive decisions Matt had made in his life, he took a gamble. He knew what made _him_ feel better these days, and what he could share with Foggy. “Hey,” he said. “Put the eggs back in the fridge and come with me. I want to show you something.”

“Uh. Okay.” Foggy sounded caught off-guard, but he put the eggs away and followed Matt. When it became clear they were headed toward the roof exit, Foggy halted. “Shit. Matt, is this a Daredevil thing? Because I one hundred percent appreciate how honest you’ve been about that stuff lately, but I am _not_ up for heavy philosophical discussions or information about drug lords this morning.”

Matt laughed. “Yeah, no, this is neither of those things. I could give you a million guesses and I don’t think you’d guess this. But I need you to promise that you won’t make any loud noises or sudden movements while we’re up there.”

“You’re not making me feel all that much better here, buddy,” said Foggy. “But yeah, okay, I promise.”

Mrs. Bennet was nursing the babies when they opened the door. She jerked her head up in awareness at their entrance—Matt, she had approved of as not a threat and a reliable bringer of food, but Foggy was a stranger to her. Matt said to Foggy in a low voice, “Stay right there for a second,” and went over slowly and quietly to kneel in the general vicinity of the den. Mrs. Bennet stayed alert and suspicious for a minute, but she was easily distracted by her babies, who were perpetually curious about new sights, and she busied herself with keeping them from toddling away, having apparently forgotten about Matt and Foggy.

“Matt,” said Foggy in a hushed voice. “Is that a litter of _raccoons_?”

Matt nodded.

“What the _hell_?”

“Foggy,” said Matt, “meet Mrs. Bennet, and Jane, Lizzie, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia.”

“Holy shit. Do you think I can get a little closer?”

Matt listened carefully to Mrs. Bennet. She was aware of Foggy’s presence, but she didn’t seem actively alarmed by it. “I think so,” he said. “Just, move slowly, and don’t touch the kits, all right?”

“No problem.” Foggy edged over, painfully slow. His efforts to walk quietly didn’t really work, but it was the thought that counted, and Mrs. Bennet wasn’t frightened. He made his way finally to Matt’s side and settled down next to him on the roof. “Wow,” he whispered, his voice full of awe. “They’re so little.”

“They are,” Matt agreed, smiling. “They grow fast, though. They were much smaller than this when they were born.”

“God.” Foggy cleared his throat softly, then said, “Named ‘em after Austen characters, huh? Nerd.”

Matt huffed out a quiet laugh. “Guilty as charged. Loud mom, five babies, I guess I couldn’t think of anything more creative.”

“So, how do you know they’re all girls? Do your senses give you some kind of superpowers when it comes to sexing raccoons?”

“First off, never say the phrase ‘sexing raccoons’ ever again. And second, I actually don’t know what sex they are. I didn’t know what sex Mrs. Bennet was until she had these little guys.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe they’re all male. But I’m imagining they probably don’t care what their names are.”

“Besides, who says a dude can’t be named ‘Lydia’?” Foggy watched them for a moment, and then said, more hesitantly, “Not that I’m not enjoying your stint as the Raccoon Whisperer here, but why exactly are you showing me this now?”

“Because you’re enjoying it,” said Matt with a shrug. “I don’t know. I know that we have to talk about what happened last night. But I’m not angry at you, and I don’t want you to think that I am, so I thought I’d show you something that always relaxes me.” He smiled involuntarily as Elizabeth made a squeaky little noise and Mrs. Bennet licked her fiercely. “I don’t know why Mrs. Bennet likes me, but she seems to, and when I’m stressed out or unhappy these days, sometimes it helps to just sit up here and hang out with their little family.”

“That’s cool, man,” said Foggy sincerely. “I mean, it’s weird as hell, but cool, and as far as coping mechanisms go, you could definitely find worse ones.” Neither of them mentioned that Matt _had_ a number of worse coping mechanisms. Instead, Foggy sighed, and said, “Getting trashed and slobbering all over someone who’s just trying to help, for instance.”

“Hey,” said Matt, a little sharply. “Don’t—don’t badmouth yourself. Just talk to me. I know you were in a bad place last night. What happened?”

“I don’t know, Matt.” Foggy tilted his head down, but Matt had a feeling he wasn’t looking at the raccoons. “It wasn’t a good move, I know that. I was just…bummed, and happy you were there, I guess.”

“That seems…a little out of character for you,” said Matt, choosing his words carefully. “What’s the connection between you being bummed and you kissing me?”

“That’s fair,” said Foggy. “I don’t know if this is going to make sense. Just…it sucks to know that you were the one who screwed up a good thing.”

Matt knew that feeling intimately. “Yeah. It does.”

 Foggy chuckled, a humorless little laugh. “Yeah. And Marci and I _had_ a good thing. But I guess it just…do you remember me talking about wanting conflicting things, or did I hallucinate that?”

“You didn’t,” Matt said softly.

“Yeah, I thought not.” Foggy scratched absently at the stubble on his jaw. “It’s why Marci broke up with me, or at least one reason. Part of me wanted the life I had with her—you know, upwardly mobile, politically ambitious, the kind of money to do whatever we wanted to do in life.”

If the life Matt had imagined with Elektra hadn’t looked exactly like the future Foggy and Marci had been building, the idea of freedom and power had been an important part of the fantasy. Foggy and Marci’s version of it would probably have been a lot more grounded in practical realities than Matt and Elektra’s, though, and would have involved fewer assassins. So he said, “Sure, of course. That’s a perfectly fine life to want.”

Foggy rolled his eyes, making Matt wince at the sound. “Sure, for some people. I don’t think it would work for _you_ , though. And that’s the thing. Part of me wanted to live in the fast lane, but part of me wanted what I had with you. Fighting the good fight, helping the little guy, working hard for a cause I believe in. And I think that’s...Marci wasn’t going to be a part of that. Even when I tried to bring those things together with her, it turned out that I couldn’t….I couldn’t make it work. I couldn’t find the balance, whatever. Marci was putting all this work into our relationship, the same way she does with everything else, and I was just….” He cut himself off, huffing out a frustrated breath. “It wasn’t fair to her.”

“Okay,” said Matt, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“And it wasn’t fair to put all that on you last night.” Foggy blew out a long, careful breath. “I’m sorry. I just got sentimental, I guess. But it’s not on you to get me to manage my feelings better.”

Matt wondered if that sentence struck Foggy as absurd as it struck him. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “I can barely manage my own feelings, let alone yours.”

They had a laugh at that. But the whole of it struck Matt as…well, it was one thing to prioritize your job over your girlfriend, and another thing to be conflicted about the kind of job you wanted and the principles by which you wanted to live your life. But neither of those things added up to kissing your business partner. Matt’s heart was in his throat. He had a history of jumping into things too quickly, though. This was too important to go stomping around carelessly. Foggy was already hurting, the last thing Matt wanted was to hurt him any more than he already had.

“I think,” he said carefully, “that maybe the first step to finding balance is to admit that you want both those things? I mean, I’m not going to pretend that I’ve found the perfect balance between being a lawyer and extralegal crime-fighting, but I don’t think I could get anywhere with either until I got to a point where I could say that both are important to me. So, I guess, if we were going to get you what you want, what would that look like?”

Matt had thought he’d let his imagination run away with him. Perhaps Foggy would talk about taking on a few more paid clients, or about the social media advertising strategy they’d briefly discussed the previous week. But in retrospect, he really should have seen it coming when Foggy said, “Well, kind of a dick move to make me say it out loud, but I kind of think that would look like you and me getting married for real and adopting your army of raccoons, or something. Don’t worry,” he hurried to say, “I get it. You’re not into me, I just got out of a major relationship like yesterday, whatever, I’m hung-over, don’t listen to anything I’m saying.”

 “Foggy,” said Matt. “So far you seem to be saying that being hung over makes you want to adopt raccoons.”

”Oh my _God_ , you’re determined to make me spell it out, aren’t you?” Foggy shook his head. “Matt, it doesn’t work without you, you know? The firm, this thing we’re building where we’re lawyers not to make money but to change the world and help people. Come on, I know you have a Thurgood Marshall quote for what I’m trying to say here.”

It wasn’t exactly the optimal moment to pull quotes out of his memory, but Matt gave it a go. “‘Lawyers have a duty in addition to that of representing their clients; they have a duty to present to the public, to be social reformers in however small a way.’ A speech from 1967—he was still the solicitor general then.”

“Of course he was,” said Foggy, his tone warm and fond all of a sudden. “You know, I never thought I’d miss you pulling Marshall out of your ass at a moment’s notice. It’s been a long time.”

“Now there’s a sentence.”

“Shut up, I’m talking about my feelings here!” The raccoon kits turned their heads toward Foggy and squeaked, and he lowered his voice. “Sorry. Sorry. What I’m trying to say is, it isn’t just about the firm. It’s about you. The person I am with you is the person I want to be. You have put me through some _unbelievable_ shit, but I love you, and this is the life I’m picking, no matter how you feel about me.”

“Foggy—“ Matt started.

“It wasn’t okay for me to kiss you like that, though. Seriously, my feelings aren’t your problem.”

“It’s not—”

“And I want to promise you that I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“Foggy,” said Matt with exasperation, “I’ve been in love with you for months.”

Foggy inhaled sharply, and Mrs. Bennet turned her attention to him again. “I’m sorry, I don’t have super hearing. Could you repeat that for me?”

“You heard me. I’ve loved you since probably the second month of our friendship, and I know I’m lousy at showing it, but I’ve really been trying, and this new lease on life I have….” Matt tried to find the words for what he wanted to say. This was his shot. “I don’t know if it’s just that we’re spending more time together again, or that my perspective on things has changed in light of everything that’s happened, but seriously, I’m in love with you. That’s why, when you kissed me last night, I had a bit of a crisis.”

“Holy shit,” Foggy breathed.

“Nothing serious,” Matt hastened to say. “But I wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t know you…felt that way.”

“You know it wasn’t, like, me using you, right?” He suddenly sounded worried. “I mean, I was trashed, and I wouldn’t have done it in my right mind, but I wasn’t doing it to mess with your head or anything.”

“I know,” said Matt. And he did. “I know that you wouldn’t do anything like that. But I also know that you love Marci, and—and even if you wanted me at the same time you wanted her, I don’t think you’re ready to just jump headfirst into something new.” Neither, he thought, was Matt. He’d been doing better lately, better than he’d thought possible. But strong feelings came easily to him; being able to manage those feelings and use them to direct his life morally and effectively had been more of a challenge. If he and Foggy were going to go for this, he wanted it to be at a time when they were both strong enough to make it last.

“No. No, you’re right.” Foggy’s hand reached over to briefly squeeze Matt’s shoulder, then let go. “So…I don’t know. Where do we go from here?”

Matt closed his eyes and listened to the morning sounds around him—honking, people ordering coffee, people talking on cell phones, pigeons cooing, Mrs. Bennet and the kits. He thought about what Father Lantom would say, and then about what Sister Maggie would say. “We build our firm up,” he said at last. “We grab brunch. We get drinks after work with Karen. We talk. You get over Marci, and I get over Elektra. And maybe we see what the future looks like.”

“Yeah.” Foggy nodded to himself. Matt could practically hear the thoughts churning in his head. “That’s a good idea, Matt. I miss Marci like hell, and I gotta—I gotta find a new place to live, and tell my parents we broke up, and all that’s gonna _suck_. Plus,” he added, his voice hoarse, “I don’t want you to be my rebound guy. I don’t think I could take it if we imploded again.”

The idea didn’t bear thinking about. “Me neither.”

“So, yeah. We take things one day at a time. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, then Foggy said, in a more normal tone of voice, “Speaking of days, it’s gotta be past ten. We’re not missing any meetings, are we?”

Matt shook his head. “No. I called Karen last night. We’ve got the day free. What do you want to do? You’ve had a rough couple of days. I think you ought to have a good time.”

“I’m having a pretty good time right here,” said Foggy. “With your raccoon buddies. Which one’s which? Obviously, Mrs. Bennet’s the big one, but what about the sisters? How do you tell them apart?”

“All right,” said Matt with a laugh. “Let me give you the full introduction.”

There were worse ways to spend a hangover, thought Matt. Weird, maybe, but it felt right, and there wasn’t much more a man could hope for than that.


End file.
